


The Only Thing That Lasts

by CrabOfDoom



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Gen, Mentions of canon minor character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-19
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-16 00:46:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11242785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrabOfDoom/pseuds/CrabOfDoom
Summary: An exploration into Tenebraean royal history and matriarchal tradition, through the gaze of its only prince.[very little is based on verifiable canon.]





	The Only Thing That Lasts

To know love in Tenebrae was to love the land.

Sixteen years of constant experience and observation, another twelve far more intermittent, had taught Ravus as much. It wasn't a truth he disputed in the least. The ancient corridors and temples owed everything to the unyielding support of incomparable bedrock and the deep roots of massive trees. As the Fenestala River took tens of thousands of years to carve the canyon around the stone pillar that would become the manor of Oracles, his family's home, the faith of Tenebrae's people in the strength of that stone made carving the manor possible over hundreds of years more. An unshakable testament befitting the queens who devoted their lives to healing the world.

The forests were thick and ageless with arborous giants that left plenty of open ground beneath their vast canopies to protect the people's homes, and still provide shelter for animals great and small. The meadows where open sunlight reigned were fertile, every last one, and awash with sweet grasses, wild grains, and flowers. The scent of the Tenebraean air, in any season, was alive with the life cycle of the trees and soil and dormant seeds.

Ravus understood perfectly how spellbinding the beauty of the land could be. He knew well the sentiment that the land was eternal, and the one love that would never leave the Tenebraean who loved it back. He shared in it.

Beneath that love of the land, was the love for the world's healer. The sole woman of each generation of Nox Fleurets--the sole human in all of Eos--who could hear the voices of the Astrals. That love was a deep and abiding respect, earned from those grateful to be healed and those thankful that their prayers had a messenger. Ravus had only briefly known his mother's mother, but he, too, shared in the people's love for his own.

Sylva Nox Fleuret was certainly a woman who wore well the crown of a queen. Where the king of Lucis was Eos' human beacon of light, Sylva was Eos' pillar of strength. The same hands that held her son close and took away the pain of scraped knees and bleeding scratches from the foils and rapiers of his lessons belonged to arms that could wield the trident of the Oracles with a speed and precision that could drop an assassin before her children could finish their cries of fear. He had been eight; Lunafreya, only two. Ravus had seen it, with his own eyes. The voice that minced no words and spared no love toward the leaders of Eos who showed no respect to Tenebrae past its resources, was the same voice that was such a cherished comfort to grieving parents, frightened orphans, and a boy of royal blood who was becoming increasingly aware that he was an outlier in a dynasty of women.

It wasn't that Ravus held any envy of learning that other nations had princes who would grow to become kings and emperors. Tenebrae's matriarchy was as natural to him as the leaves changing color. It wasn't even unique to Eos, with Lestallum and Accordo's leaders traditionally being women. They were elected, no less, and that only made a queendom that much less out of any sense of ordinary.

What weighed on Ravus' heart on rare days that were slowly becoming more frequent, was that wherever there was a prince in these other nations, there was a king. Wherever there was a son, there was a father.

A wide hall spanned the center of Fenestala Manor, joining a balcony for public address at one end, and the queens' throne room on the other. In between, where the sunlight and rain from open arches couldn't damage them, the walls were lined with the history of the Nox Fleuret bloodline, rendered in everything from tapestry to stained glass to oil paints. Anyone who visited the Manor was welcome to view the two thousand years worth of portraits. Only the Nox Fleurets were allowed to touch.

So often tall for his age, Ravus had indeed spent many afternoons studying his ancestors' faces, and with a light fingertip, tracing the features they possessed that he recognized in his mother's face, or his own. Each queen of Tenebrae had a frame as tall as he, as a young man, whether her portrait was large enough to meet its edges or not. To the right, half the size, was a frame around the portrait of a man. Beneath him, was their child. Always a daughter. Almost always, only one.

It was proof of the Astrals' favor, many believed, that a throne would so often have only one heiress, and she would indeed survive to become queen. The eras of two daughters, three daughters, were times of great peace in Tenebrae, for there would surely always be an Oracle. What there would not be, not ever, was a son.

Seventeen hundred years before, the one other male child born to an Oracle didn't exactly count. She was never a boy. From toddlerhood, the old parchments say, Chaenn Nox Fleuret chose every trapping of a princess. At fifteen, the same age Ravus had thus far reached, she had been chosen as Oracle and begged the Astrals to allow her body to bear her own child and continue her bloodline. What the Astrals gave her was a sister. Chaenn ruled as Tenebrae's queen well into her eighties, one of the longest reigns yet, and raised her niece as her heiress.

It was a fascinating chapter in his family's history, but it offered Ravus little to which he could relate. Chaenn wasn't a son, and Ravus had no desire to become a daughter. Throughout a hall full of two millenia of children born to Oracles, there was one portrait of a son, and he was Sylva's.

When Ravus had become old enough to understand his own rarity, it did not make him proud to be the first. It made him suspicious. Another sentiment, he would learn, that he shared with his people. _Why_ was he the first son to be born to an Oracle? Why would Tenebrae be poised to have its first king? Why _now?_ While a king could certainly produce a daughter, could having a king at all be a harbinger of Tenebrae's fall? His birth was not called a bad omen, but neither was anyone eager to call it a good one.

Lunafreya's birth, by contrast, was a cause for celebration. Ravus, only six at the time, nevertheless agreed. Tradition would continue, two children were sure to continue their bloodline, and Ravus already understood that it gave him a true purpose within his family. If he was not to be a king, he would be a queen's protector. Sylva was overjoyed to hear it come her son's lips, without anyone's influence. He was started on lessons in swordsmanship at once. It brought Ravus contentment for a long time.

There were not often calls for Ravus to pass through the great hall of his ancestry. When there were, he would feel a chip knocked off of that contentment. He was twelve before he could figure out why.

Despite the lack of sons, for every Oracle in the hall, there was a man beside her. A man who fathered her child.

Fewer than twenty of those men, over two thousand years, were husbands. By vast majority, there were no prince regents to rule beside the queens. Some were kings, princes, lords of other countries, and their daughters were the results of alliances and treaties. A scant few were common men of great importance, in their times.

Most were faithful Tenebraean soldiers of high rank, chosen for their clear physical health and strength, their loyalty to their homeland, and to symbolically as well as literally weave more of the people of Tenebrae into the royal bloodline. The man who had helped Sylva bear Ravus and Lunafreya was one of them.

Whenever Ravus found himself in the great hall with time to spare, he looked at that man's portrait a great deal.

As a soldier, Grigio Nox Fleuret's original surname was not included on a the mythril plaque that identified him. A soldier chosen to be the queen's consort surrendered that surname, as a protection for his family. Siring a royal child was supposed to be an honor, not a potential death sentence for dozens of Tenebraeans, if an enemy decided that they could be used as blackmail. The advent and proliferation of mass media and global communication had made it quite easy for modern soldiers' families to be discovered, if someone wanted badly enough to know, but the tradition remained.

Assuming Sylva's surname was not a marriage, but a title; no one was going to assume that a man had been born with it, for no man until Ravus had been. In the Tenebrae Guard, however, Grigio's use of the name was a mark of distinguished service to his country, for he was offering his blood to secure Tenebrae's future, in more ways than one.

The soldiers were not expected to be active parents to their children. Most weren't, and chose to remain with their military service. Grigio, from what Ravus had been told, had chosen a compromise. He was not present as a father to raise his children, but he remained at the manor as its captain of the guard, to protect them. Ravus had no memory of ever seeing Grigio without his uniform's mask. The only words he ever spoke to the soldier were offering "good day, captain". Behind the obscuring, translucent mask, Ravus could still see him smile before offering "good day, your highness" in return.

Ravus never felt an ache of wishing he'd said more. His behavior had been no more careless than any other child's. What he did feel as he aged, was a hollow sense of loss. There were no rules that forbade Ravus from choosing to forge a more direct bond with Grigio, but it would still have had to have been Ravus' initiative. And there was never a chance for Ravus to make that decision, when he was old enough to ponder that he would have liked to have known the captain better.

The same assassin that Sylva had taken down to protect her children had only gotten so close to them over the captain's dead body.

Ravus and Lunafreya were taken to Grigio's state funeral. Neither understood their personal loss at his death, but both realized from their mother's grief and Grigio's entombment among their ancestors that he had been someone more important than a simple manor guard. As a young man of fifteen years, Ravus at least had the peace of knowing that his eight-year-old self had mourned for the loss of someone who must have loved Tenebrae dearly.

The only prince of Tenebrae avoided the great hall as much as he could, with each passing year. Each time he had to pass through a length of the hall, he felt drawn more and more to stop at Grigio's portrait. More than once, he'd lost hours there. Every birthday seemed to arrive with new questions that he supposed he should ask Sylva someday. Grigio was his father, after all, and he had a right to the answers. Just the same, some would no doubt be extremely personal to her, and he wasn't entirely sure he'd _want_ to know.

Shortly before his sixteenth birthday, his mother had set off to look for her son, missing from his seat at dinner, and wisely chose to check for him in the great hall first. He heard her call his name, she was certain, yet he didn't move to face her. Sylva slowly came up to his left side, and followed his gaze to the painting that held her son's rapt attention.

A portrait of a young man, in his early thirties. He wore a dress uniform, the same he'd worn the day he'd accepted his queen's request. His skin was pale but given a warm tone from the outdoors, and dotted with at least a dozen small beauty marks. His eyes were a bright, woody brown, and the artist had done an impressive job of capturing the light within them. The ridge of his brow, the sharpness of his cheeks, and the broad bridge of his nose were all features that neither Sylva nor Lunafreya possessed, that had occasionally left Ravus feeling self-conscious about standing out, but knowing their source helped them to make sense. His hair barely touched his uniform's standing collar, yet was thick, wild, and an almost wintry gray.

"He told me his parents gave him that name," Sylva spoke up, "because he came into the world with that hair. We gave you your name for the same reason; for your eyes."

"Mother?" Ravus tested.

"Yes, my dear?"'

A hundred of his questions piled onto his mind at once. Ravus tried his best to establish some order of priority among them, as he wondered the whole time if simply asking her to keep talking would be the best course.

"Ravus?"

In the end, he supposed everything he wanted to know hinged off of a single question.

"Did you love him?"

Sylva looked from her son to his father's portrait. She drew a slow breath, and sighed.

"I am the Oracle and the queen of Tenebrae," she said.

Ravus sighed as well, and figured that was an answer he should've expected. The love of the land above all others. Neither right nor wrong. Simply fact.

"I had all of Eos to choose from," she continued.

Ravus looked to her, not yet understanding. His mother gently guided a stray lock of his ash blond hair back into place. She raised a hand to his jaw to hold him still, and placed a kiss on the small beauty mark on the left side of his chin. It required her to rise onto her toes, with her son already a head above her.

"And I would have accepted no other."


End file.
